Russia focused on seizing province
K Y I V • Russian troops bombarded a riverside city on Friday in what appeared to herald a major assault to seize the last remaining Ukrainian-held territory in a province it claims on behalf of separatists.
Ukrainian officials said Russian forces had launched a massive artillery bombardment against Sievierodonetsk, one of the last Ukrainian-held bastions in Luhansk, one of two southeastern provinces Moscow and its proxies proclaim as independent states.
The city, and its twin Lyshchansk on the opposite bank of the Siverskiy Donets river, form the eastern part of a Ukrainian-held pocket that Russia has been trying to overrun since mid-april after failing to capture the capital Kyiv.
“The Russian army has started very intensive destruction of the town of Sievierodonetsk, the intensity of shelling doubled, they are shelling residential quarters, destroying house by house,” Luhansk governor Serhiy Gaidai said via his Telegram channel.
“We do not know how many people died, because it is simply impossible to go through and look at every apartment,” he said.
Ukraine's general staff said it had pushed back an offensive on Sievierodonetsk, part of what it described as major Russian operations along a stretch of the frontline.
Despite losing ground elsewhere in recent weeks, Russian forces have advanced on the Luhansk front, in what some military analysts view as a major push to achieve scaleddown war aims of capturing more territory claimed by pro-russian rebels.
“This will be the critical next few weeks of the conflict,” said Mathieu Boulegue, an expert at London's Chatham House think tank. “And it depends on how effective they are at conquering Sievierodonetsk and the lands across it.”
In Moscow, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the “liberation of the Luhansk People's Republic” would be over soon.
In an overnight address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the conditions in the Donbas, which includes Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk province, as “hell” and said the region had been “completely destroyed” by Russia.
Capturing Luhansk and Donetsk would allow Moscow to claim victory after it announced last month that this was now its objective. It achieved a major step toward that goal this week, when Ukraine ordered its garrison in the main Donbas port, Mariupol, to stand down after a near threemonth siege.
Russia's Shoigu said around 2,000 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered in the past four days. Kyiv has not confirmed how many fighters have surrendered.